Here are pictures of one of my females:
So happy that they are starting to mature, really hope I can breed them successfully!
Well, my Pyrophorus noctilucus pupa has molted into a adult now, it looks absolutely stunning! 😊 Sadly, it is a puny 25 mm long, half the length of a normal adult, and it looks like the other two larvae from the original trio are also pupating as well. I'm not sure why these larvae are pupating so prematurely, I have a strong suspicion that it is diet related though.
I recently switched out dog food for chick feed as the main food source for much of my invertebrates, and admittedly this all started happening to my Pyrophorus after the switch, (though I think the first larva to pupate actually stopped eating right before the switch...). I don't know if it's the switch in diet itself that stunted my larvae, the chick feed itself not being nutritious enough for them, or perhaps improper substrate, (they are being kept on my old fermented Traeger sawdust), and that's what's killing me the most. 😩
The younger two larvae I have are being kept on different substrate than my other larvae and are also being fed chick feed, so we'll see what happens with those. If they become stunted like my other larvae, even after being fed chick feed from an earlier age, then the chick feed itself is likely to blame for the malnutrition.
If the larvae grow to a normal size though, then that means it was either the abrupt switch of diet that caused my original trio to become stunted, or poor substrate. The problem is, I won't really know for certain which one was to blame without further testing...
Anyway, at least they didn't die or anything, hopefully I'll have a sexed pair out of the trio and will be able to breed them, and then refine my care methodology for them so I can raise nice, big adults in the future. 🙂 If the larvae can't eat chick feed though, that's gonna suck, I'll have to feed them mostly live prey then, since I don't want to buy dog/cat food anymore, and that's going to get tricky with the tiny hatchling larvae... 😑
Well, here's a dark, blurry photo I took of my adult through the side of it's enclosure, you can see both headlights glowing here:
It will take about three weeks for the adult to emerge from it's pupal chamber, so it will be a while still until I can get some decent pictures of it.
Anyway, that's gonna do it for this post, thanks for reading everyone, I'll see you all next time! 😉
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